Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, report finds
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.nestle.com/investors/corporate-governance/manage...
Directors at Nestlé and their other associations:
- Paul Bulcke: L'Oréal, Roche Holding
- U. Mark Schneider: None listed
- Henri de Castries: HSBC Holdings, Saint-Gobain
- Dick Boer: None listed
- Kimberly A. Ross: PQ Group Holdings, Chubb Ltd
- Dinesh Paliwal: Bristol Myers Squibb, Raytheon Technologies
- Patrick Aebischer: Lonza Group, Logitech
- Kasper Rorsted: Siemens AG, Bertelsmann
- Lindiwe Majele Sibanda: None listed
- Anna Richell: None listed
- Eva Cheng: None listed
- Renato Fassbind: Swiss Re, Kühne+Nagel International
It's fine to claim "the buck stops at the board/CEO and they should be responsible", but claiming that all directors are directly responsible, just because they're on the board is a stretch. If that counts as "directly" responsible, what type of "responsible" is associated with explicitly ordering/approving the decision?
1. those are a lot of "if"s
2. it's not necessary that the explicit decision to add sugars made it all the way up to the board. That could be due to banal (eg. board of directors doesn't care about every minutiae of how the business) or nefarious reasons (ie. providing plausible deniability).
>then in some ways they are responsible for the company’s actions
To be clear, I'm not claiming they should be left off the hook entirely, just that claiming they're "directly" responsible doesn't make much sense. From my original comment:
>It's fine to claim "the buck stops at the board/CEO and they should be responsible"
I recall there are receptors in your stomach lining which detect the presence of sugar even when its not obviously tasteable, such as in predominantly salty fast foods and so. This is a sneaky way to make you addicted while you don't even realize it.
Sugar gives people a little dopamine boost. So if, as a company, you make your product a little more sugary, people like it more. Then, all the companies are in an arms race to make the tastiest product and you end up where we are.
Of course, it's not only about sugar. You also want to make it more salty and fatty because people like that too.
And somehow we can't stop this arms race that causes millions of people to have diseases like diabetes and costs society enormous amounts of money. I guess once Nestle buys up Pfizer and health insurance companies, the cycle is complete.
For adults salt and monosodic glutamate come into play, the logic is the same. The more you put in the product, the better it sells.
Every commercial consumer food product from large brands like this is the output of an elaborate, rigorous "food science" endeavor that tests a variety of ingredient and preparation hypotheses against focus groups, established targets for texture/sweetness/..., cost, etc and balances those against any regulations that the brand's lobbying arm hasn't blocked.
They look for maxima across their field requirements and then send the results of that product research to manufacturing and sale.
Presumably, and unsurprisingly, they've found that sweetened milk drives more sales and brand loyalty and have therefore pushed it into any markets that allow it.
It was really annoying to make him eat ordinary porridge afterwards, so I guess the sugar is much about fooling the parents into believing the kid does not like the non-sugar product.
If you don't read the ingridients list you wont realize there is sugar.
A nurse once made him stop crying when he was to take a vaccine by sticking her finger in his mouth. I was flabbergasted by such a simple trick working so great, until she said she had sugar on the finger.
Sugar is a cheat code for parenting.
Sugar is bad for our health, sure, but it's not like it is rat poison. It gives easily digestible calories and in a product like baby formula, where you have defined amounts of that product to consume every day, "added sugars" in a vacuum does not seem to be such a big problem to me.
Our pediatrician pushed us to use it in supplement to breast-feeding because the baby was below the expected curve. For what it's worth (not much), our baby that was fed Caloreen has no sugar addiction, quite the contrary.
Knowing our pediatrician, I am 99.9% sure that he didn't have any incentive from Nestlé and was just having the baby interest in mind. I am rather blaming the weight curves that are more designed for bottle-fed babies than breast-fed ones, combined with the human tendency to focus on the indicators rather than what they represent.
For formula-fed infants the suggested serving amount is "exactly as much they want".
And if we're going to argue whether a food has more or too much sugar than other foods, we need to use an objective frame of reference as a point of comparison.
Anyway, the Nestle hate in this overall thread is just as worthless as the Boeing bashing and Musk Derangement Syndrome seen in other threads.
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40087543 I suggested using per 100g or per 100 calories as a reference. Extremely objective and clear.
BTW manufacturers can (and do) play games with the suggested serving amount to make their product appear healthier or more desirable. Standardize on a common denominator for a product category and stick to it. Then, if needed, call out how many units of the product are in that standard size.
These are private corporations, their HQs are in Switzerland purely for corporate tax reasons, otherwise they would move away long long time ago, given massive salaries required to get & keep top staff.
If given countries were really that concerned and wanted to push for better products sold in their countries, there are numerous ways. They can do literally anything they want back home on their own market, or they can push ie via WTO arbitrage, heck even European courts do handle some Swiss lawsuits.
Or you know, people just educate themselves a trivial bit about nutrition and stop buying stuff that is harmful.
We can have a smart discussion with facts and reality check, or emotional outbursts that lead nowhere.
I saw kids as small as 7-8yr old drinking sugary drinks and eating lays on their way to school. Manufacturers to advertising firms to media companies all should be hanged for what they have done to kids
It's just infuriating that we accept that we are going to get fucked by every company that can possibly do so, in every aspect of our lives. Humans run those companies. What can we do to stop this vicious cycle, outside of guillotines?
That doesn't mean we need to just accept it and let them do whatever they want though.
What it means is we need to change the system so that companies aren't putting profits first and instead require them to prioritize product quality, employee well being, and environmental sustainability.
Profit should be a distant fourth if it's allowed at all. Frankly the idea that some amount of value is just sucked out of companies by parasites who don't contribute to the company at all is just not right.
That's the problem. The current system blows, but what is the alternative?
The issue is, it's really hard to come up with leakproof regulation. Companies have far more resources to look for loopholes than governmental agencies to design the law. An extreme example of this is the financial sector, where regulators have pretty much thrown in the towel. They just write vague law to be able to prosecute whatever after the fact.
BUT if we expect companies to behave ethically and act on that, then the incentives for businesses are effectively altered, and it's much harder to find loopholes in that.
(And no, I don't think you are right, so I don't think we should out-right extinguish them. But if you are right, we should.)
(That said, there has been examples in history when that happened. Of course, such corporation-like structures were only terminated by war. I really don't think we are anywhere near that today.)
So yes, a lot worse. They would not be allowed to do this in a country with better regulation.
Why do you get to decide for other people what's good for them? They buy formula with sugar (that's specified on the package, as even TFA itself admits at the very start). If you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. European regulations are not some holy truths for the entire world. Macro-nutrient guidelines in particular don't have a good track record; and come think of it, neither do European decisions implemented in the third world, historically.
By your logic, govs should not ban any pesticides, drugs, etc
1) Who said their science is fake, and what science anyway? They inform the masses of the sugar content as required. Should marketing be a crime? Or science you disagree with?
2) Who decides what is marketing and manipulation and what is just speech? I trust people who want to liberate the "masses" from "manipulation" (and such) far, far less than the most selfish psychopaths. Let the masses decide for themselves.
3) Oh, and if manipulation of masses by cheap marketing was a crime, we'd need to start with abolishing the governments.
4) And while we are at it, this NGO propaganda from guardian would be more of a crime than selling sugar!
5) I do think governments should have extremely high threshold for banning things, but "by your logic" doesn't follow. What the company is doing is completely legal, the governments didn't ban anything in this case. Some despicable activists think they know better than the governments of those other countries and the people buying stuff, and that stupid EU rules should apply worldwide. I frankly think we should ban the use of oxygen by these activists, it's highly combustible and very dangerous. It's for their own good, that they just don't see.
Is there a unified explanation for the company's behavior?
Western media covers it because it is a well known name that has done similar things before and is sells a lot of things aimed at babies and toddlers.
I don't know how that compares to how much sugar Nestle puts in, but the mix of different sugars and the timing of their introduction are helpful in regulating the baby's gut flora. I doubt the same can be said for just straight up sucrose and honey.
I'm sure honey is not equivalent to the sugars in breast milk in terms of suitability for an infant, but it's not clear to me that reducing the carbohydrate content would necessarily be better if breast milk wasn't available.
Nestle is one of the major players in the book. So this news is probably not a surprise for people around the food industry.
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40067575
I wish they let them know and i wish they enforce a ban on these products and start to develop a local brand that cares about its people
More to the point... "The results, and examination of product packaging, revealed added sugar". So basically Nestle puts sugar in the products exactly as it says, in a way that's completely legal and visible to consumers, and some random NGO thinks EU regulations should apply to the entire world. How is this news at all, of any kind? Guardian is basically breitbart of the left, please don't post propaganda.
I mean yes, these food corporations are evil in same ways pharma is evil in maximizing extracted money from their customers. Every single business is doing this in some way, the limit is normally law and law so far allows this. We all know law is imperfect, catches up slowly, can be corrupted.
This means, and always meant, that parents should actually be effin' parents and go that extra mile and check what they are putting in kids mouths. 'We have no time' excuse I call BS, just manage your phone/TV/gaming addiction and learn a bit instead, there lies a problem. Critical thinking. Expecting world will magically take care of you and solve your concerns/problems.
In many parts of western Europe, food is not just a necessity and afterthought, but one of main focuses in one's life. Preparing it is often ritual that puts together family, a lot of attention is put into its quality, and not quantity. Self-cooked meals are on average much healthier than pre-done.
Boycotting some evil company X will just move you to company Y, and if you look these corporations own most of the market [1], rather educate people around you, be an example and push those few political buttons that are there.
> Wigand turned his attention to improving tobacco additives, some of which were designed for "impact boosting", using chemicals like ammonia to enhance absorption of nicotine in the lungs and affect the brain and central nervous system faster. Wigand believed this process was a deliberate attempt to increase addiction to cigarettes.
Some people truly just like to see others suffering because of them.
The amount of toying with this stuff is both fascinating and terrifying
So they've done nothing illegal and people are free to buy another product.
Why is this even news?
> WHO guidelines for the European region say no added sugars or sweetening agents should be permitted in any food for children under three. While no guidance has been specifically produced for other regions, researchers say the European document remains equally relevant to other parts of the world.
So "researchers" wrote this article because Nestle sells a product that the WHO disagrees with? Who fucking cares? It's sugar.
People in poor countries are not mentally disabled. They can read nutrition labels. They can buy products.
This isn't even a rule, it's just a _suggestion_.
No. For an extreme case, it’s impossible to be healthy at 1,000 pounds. You will have diabetes. You will have wrecked joints. You will have dire circulatory issues. Those things are absolutely guaranteed. Your body can’t support being that size, or processing the amount of food required to become that size.
You can be pretty healthy at the low end of the obese range. I could stand to lose a bit of weight, but also hit the gym and run frequently. My labs are just fine. You cannot be healthy at the extreme sizes. Everyone’s body would cross the line somewhere in the middle.